In an increasingly interconnected world all significant providers of goods and services have to set up large and, most often, very-large databases holding the characteristics, specifications and costs of their products, services and global commercial offers. Operated under the control of a database management system (DBMS) contents are made accessible, simultaneously, to many online customers from all over the world, and also to the authorized administrators in charge of keeping database contents updated. In this environment databases must often be operated in real time, in a 24-hour-a-day/7-day-a-week mode.
In the airline industry, examples of such very-large database platforms are the ones that hold the airline fares along with the rules restricting their use. Fare databases are mainly set up by a few worldwide global distribution systems (GDSs) that provide travel services to all the actors of the travel industry and more specifically to traditional travel agencies and also to all sorts of other online travel service providers. For instance, AMADEUS (trademark) is a world leading GDS.
One large provider of fares is the airline tariff publishing company (ATPCO), an organization owned by a number of domestic and international airlines that collects and distributes the latest airfares of many airlines around the world on a multi-daily basis. Another provider of fares is called SITA, a similar international organization. ATPCO and SITA provide fare data in an electronic form suitable for computer processing including all the rules associated with those fares. Fares and rules provided by airlines and coded by ATPCO and SITA are electronically transmitted to the GDSs mentioned above for being incorporated into their fare databases.
ATPCO and SITA are not however the only sources of fares for the GDS fare databases. A GDS like AMADEUS also provides software tools that let third-party fare providers file fares directly into its fare and pricing database platform. Indeed, a good deal of fares created on a daily basis by airline companies, and travel service companies on behalf of airlines, is negotiated fares. Contrary to public fares, negotiated fares are contracted between, e.g., an airline company and a particular travel agency or travel organization for its private use. They are often filed directly into GDS fare database thus bypassing ATPCO and SITA.
However, direct filing of fares does not go without posing its own set of problems. The fare and pricing database platform is a complex and very-large database which is continuously in use and must sustain real-time commercial transactions while being updated. Especially, filing of new fares along with the associated data such as the rules that restrict their use and the available routes requires that many transactions all complete successfully before actually getting a consistent set of updated data tables that can translate into new useable fares.
It is thus the object of the invention to describe a technique to update a large database, such as a GDS fare database, without disturbing its normal operation while its updating (i.e., entry of new fares) is in progress. It is a specific object of the invention to allow a validation of the new fares before they become visible and can be actually used by the end-users of the database.
Further objects, features and advantages of the present invention will become apparent to the ones skilled in the art upon examination of the following description in reference to the accompanying drawings. It is intended that any additional advantages be incorporated herein.